Stolen vehicle can be tracked down in minutes

Sometimes it takes less than a quarter of an hour to locate a car equipped with an anti-theft. This is the most effective tool used in locating vehicles.

A few days ago, it was loud about a man who only after half a year had realised that his ancient Mercedes of 1958 had fallen prey to thief. It happened when while searching for some parts for a car restoration on the Internet, he came across an online auction where his own vehicle was being sold! As it turned out, the car was stolen by someone looking for scrap metal on the property where the old-timer was parked – the car was taken out with a tow truck.

This type of unpleasant surprises can be avoided if a vehicle is equipped with a radio or GPS/GSM monitoring system or with a system combining both solutions. “Vehicles with advanced radio tracking systems are recovered in 98 percent of cases within 24 hours. Even police officers from the departments to fight car crime confirm the effectiveness of this solution in the talks with us” – notes Mirosław Marianowski from Gannet Guard Systems.

Tracking of a stolen vehicle is always carried out according to the same procedure. An owner reports the disappearance of a car to the police, immediately afterwards he/she informs the company responsible for securing the car about the lost or coordinates cooperation with the company based on notifications sent automatically by the modules installed in the vehicle. Upon receipt of the notification, the alarm central transmits instructions to the tracking team, which takes steps to locate the car. Sometimes, only the GPS / GSM module in the car is sufficient. This was the case with the recently recovered Audi Q7. „The alarm central received notification about the theft of Audi SUV secured by our company. The vehicle was stolen in Katowice. We managed to locate it in just a couple of minutes from the time of notification. The position of the car was determined by the GPS signal. The coordinates of the place where the thieves parked the car were transferred to the police, which recovered the vehicle” – informs Mirosław Marianowski.

When using the radio system, a vehicle is tracked by means of a radiolocation. This solution, resistant to the jammers commonly used by thieves, sometimes requires the involvement of search teams driving vehicles equipped with a radio tracking apparatus. It sometimes happens that an aircraft is used to determine the position of the vehicle. Such procedures were implemented at the time of receiving notification of a stolen JCB 3CX backhoe loader. Information about the probable theft reached the Gannet Guard Systems crew in the morning. Within 45 minutes of reporting the theft, technicians tracked the vehicle down (they set up the coordinates), and after another three quarters they indicated where the backhoe loader was exactly parked. In total, the location and finding took 1,5 hour. The construction equipment was stolen in Sochaczew. The lost item was located in one of the towns in the Mazowieckie voivodship. After indicating the location of the stolen machine, the police entered the property and started to identify the perpetrators.

“Stolen vehicle tracking times vary depending on the technology used to find them. In the case of radio systems, which are much harder to detect by thieves and practically impossible to disrupt, the actions usually take a little longer, but it happens that they do not even exceed an hour” – says Dariusz Kwakszys, IT Manager at Gannet Guard Systems.

The issue of time differences in finding stolen vehicles by means of GPS/GSM and radio systems is due to the nature of the tracking technology. Modules using satellite location give a continuous signal, which makes them easier to detect and can be jammed by jammers used by thieves. Radio systems are triggered only at the time of reporting the theft, so thieves while choosing a target will not be able to determine whether such a module is in the car. In addition, they make it possible to track a vehicle hidden in underground garages or steel containers.